'Sliding Doors' moments

We often spend a lot of time, energy, and money considering and planning for big life changes and decisions, but the film ‘Sliding Doors’, with Gwyneth Paltrow, shows how the little decisions in our day can often have a significant impact on our wellbeing, without us even realising. In today’s offering I’m going to explore this idea and share an experience that almost didn’t happen. It’s an invitation for you to consider the things that almost didn’t happen, that led to wonderful glimmers in your own life.

A woman's life changes depending on whether she catches a train in the subway.

Sliding Doors (1998) IMDb quote

In the film we watch how the day turns out for Helen who’s just been sacked from her job and travels home on the subway to discover her partner is having an affair, and how differently it turns out for the other Helen who misses the train, and doesn’t. Whilst we have the power to see the lives of ‘Sliding Doors’ Helens, we don’t get to see the alternative lives that might result from a minor difference in our day; the alternative realities remain concealed.

We’re often encouraged to consider our choices, and weigh up the positive and negative outcomes before acting, as if consequences are always predictable. Perhaps we find it difficult to consider the randomness of life, and how much of what happens to us might be in the hands of the Gods, or something else other than us. This kind of thinking disrupts the ego-driven beliefs that we are in control of our destiny, or even our day. It wasn’t a conscious decision for Helen not to get on the subway that day, but the consequences were huge.

These musings all resulted from a small decision that ordinarily would’ve gone unnoticed…

A quiet inner voice cried out that it was too tired to take a swim on Wednesday morning this week. As with a small child, I suspected that a part of me just fancied a bit longer in bed that morning. All that I needed was a little encouragement, and I gently persuaded myself to put on my costume and head down to the pool. The cool winter water is great for starting the day mindfully, and slowing everything down. I would be fine and would enjoy the swim once I got in.

I was right, but in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.

Having access to an outside pool in which I can take a swim first thing in the morning is one of the things that life in the Cayman Islands has gifted me. I don’t take it for granted. I’ve always been a keen swimmer, but I hate being stuck inside a gym or leisure centre when it’s possible to exercise in the great outdoors. I wrote about my cold water swimming here on Substack, having proudly swum through my first winter season last year. Cold water swimming means something very different here. In the Cayman Islands people comment on how cold the sea and the pools are now, and explain to me that no-one uses the pools for about two months here.

‘We’ve reached winter’, they say, ‘the water is too cold’.

I try not to challenge them (not always successfully), remembering the bone chilling creep of water down the back of my neck as I entered that murky 7.4 degree water. That was cold water.

But it’s all relative. A reader from Scandinavia might scoff at me. 7.4 degrees (see how the point 4 makes a big difference!) is nothing, they might think. They might remind me of a YouTube video I saw of a pregnant lady cracking a thick layer of ice off the surface of a full outdoors ice tub and lowering her costume-clad body in. That my friends is cold water!

Our body’s acclimatise to the temperature outside, generally over a period of two weeks. IOWA healthcare says that this is faster with heat, and slower in the cold. Having been here far longer than that, I’ve got a different gauge of hot and cold than when I first arrived on island. So how cold really is the sea? It certainly makes us all yelp when we get in it now, but we don’t need to move about much to stay warm.

Grand Cayman Water Temperature: Forecasts & current water temp

It’s still 80 degrees!?!? The pool is significantly colder, but nowhere near single figures.

So back to the point, and the small decisions we make.

To swim or not to swim?

Having convinced myself to swim, I’m consciously paying attention to the feel of the water on my body as I sink deeper, the resistance against my hands and arms as I push them forward for another stroke, the sounds of the waves, and the birds tweeting in the bushes around the pool, and the moon in the sky.

I take it all in, watching my attention wander as I swim the laps. One way I’m heading towards my apartment block, and the other further away from it. It was a windy day on Wednesday morning, so the sea was always roaring beside me, on one side and then the other.

Whilst homeward facing, something in the sky caught my eye, just beyond the pool gazebo. As it got closer, I saw two bodies with large wings flapping. These were big birds, and not anything I had seen before. Earlier this week I spotted another large winged bird sweeping just above the ironshore coastline. I wasn’t able to identify that either, until it landed a hundred meters away from me and raised its elegant head on its long neck. What I thought might be a tall slender crane stood still, beak poised above the water, ready to catch a fish. These birds were not like that. Their wings were just as wide, but larger, and fuller. I watched as they flapped and flapped themselves closer, up over the gazebo and directly over my head. Two large bodies, belly and bill down, so pale and graceful. That distinctive beak.

I turned and watched them fly away, surely open-mouthed with wonder!

Did I really just see two pelicans fly overhead??

By now any thoughts of being tired were forgotten and I wanted to prolong my swim time. On my next lap four frigate birds appeared, as if playing above me, catching the wind and soaring with it. Just as I considered that I’d not seen so many together before, a fifth came along and joined the fun. Round and round they flew, then out behind the apartment block and out of sight.

This is one of the swim memories I never want to forget.

Each day I make the decision to go and swim, I have no idea what the poolside world will bring me- a moth that I can save from drowning, pink skies of delight, a child’s toy to retrieve from the depths. None of these things were imaginable when I had the ‘Sliding Doors’ decision of a job down the road, or one in the Cayman Islands, but what really mattered was the choice of whether to swim or not to swim.

Dory to Marlin in ‘Finding Nemo’ (2003)

We rarely know the things that will happen to us and make us feel most alive. Sometimes they happen when we choose to swim, and sometimes they happen when we don’t.

Note: It is my understanding that the birds whose flight path I was under were two brown pelicans. Local journalist Sarah Bridge interviewed island bird experts who said that the pelicans have been sighted on island since December. The brown pelican was listed under the US Endangered Species act until 2009 and is the national bird of Saint Martin, Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the official state bird of Louisiana (Wikipedia).

To get a sense of how big these birds were, Turner (2020) says they measure from 1 to 1.52 m (3 ft 3 in to 5 ft 0 in) in length and have a wingspan of 2.03 to 2.28 m (6 ft 8 in to 7 ft 6 in). It is no wonder they caught my attention!

There is wonder in these magical moments. Life is surely for enjoying these precious moments, taking them into our hearts, so that we feel the glimmers deeply. More importantly, they can make us want to learn more and do our best to protect nature all around us. There can be joy in the sharing, and contentment in keeping the memory to ourselves.

Whether you choose to share them here or not, what experiences have come about for you from these ‘Sliding Doors’ moments? What has come about from a thing that almost didn’t happen?

I’m grateful that I chose to swim that morning. I wonder how the day panned out for the other Jo who stayed in bed a few minutes more…

Turner, Angela (2020). Elliott, A.; Christie, D.A.; Jutglar, F.; de Juana, E.; Kirwan, G.M. (eds.). "Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)". Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. doi:10.2173/bow.brnpel.01.